Title: Magnetic First Words – Days Out

Written by: Michelle Trowell

Illustrated by: Barry Green

Published by: Top That! Publishing

This hard-board book contains over 100 magnetic first words around the theme of Days Out. It has been designed to promote literacy skills, help hand-eye coordination and to encourage parent-child interaction. The pages are magnetic so the words and numbers do not easily fall off and the pages can be turned leaving the magnets in place.

Barry Green’s bold, double-page spread illustrations contain a lot of action, ideal for prompting discussion whilst matching the words to the pages. The children can also invent their own sentences linked to the lively pictures which include children playing by the lake, at the fair and on the beach.

The book contains many of the high frequency sight words the children are required to learn from reception upwards. In my opinion the book will make learning fun and will definitely help with sight recognition of these high frequency words (such as: we, she, look, on, can, etc.) as they have to search through all the words provided for the correct word to match.

Suitable for children aged three upwards, I think they would also make an ideal activity for KS1 children in a reading corner. You will need a pretty little pot to keep all the magnets in though once you have taken them out to use.